Free The Bodyguard by Leena Lehtolainen Page B

another direction, I made a joke about how I hoped I wouldn’t need her for spiritual guidance anytime soon.
    I figured I could find out more about this Trankov character at the train station. Luckily, Riikka dragged Jenni to the movies later that day, and I had the house to myself to get prepared. I’d appear at the station as my alter ego, Reiska Räsänen.
    I had created him a few years earlier. When Dylan Monroe, Mary’s friend from Tribeca, e-mailed me about his trip to Finland to teach a class on male impersonation, I signed up immediately—I knew being able to pass as a man would have its uses. The other students went for more colorful types of men: ice hockey players, CEOs, heavy metal fans, but I opted for a typical, all-around Finnish guy. The type who sat next to me at school and who played cards with me in the army.
    Reiska’s hair was slightly longer and mousier than my own blond, cropped hair, and he had a thick mustache and a bald spot on the back of his head. Usually he tried to hide it with a baseball cap. His mirrored glasses were straight out of the ’70s. I needed bushier eyebrows to become Reiska. To make my skin appear more masculine, I piled on foundation; Dylan had recommended a particular brand. Reiska’s clothes were pretty much the same as mine; the combat boots and jeans were gender neutral, as were the jogging pants and sneakers he occasionally wore. The brown-and-gray-checked shirt had belonged to Uncle Jari and was a bit snug on Reiska, which was okay. Most important was his gait: it was confident, manly, and sent the message, “Get out of my way.” When Reiska had shown up in Moscow, prostitutes assumed he was a Finnish tourist.
    His voice was the biggest hurdle. Mine was an alto, but it clearly belonged to a woman. Reiska’s speech was hard to decipher, as if he had something caught in his throat. He also had a stutter, which made him appear a little less tough than he wanted. Reiska did his best not to speak with a regional accent, but often an awkward turn of phrase gave him away. His lilt made it clear he was from Eastern Finland.
    Dylan had asked me, why Reiska? Why this almost-invisible everyman? His question provided the answer. Reiska wasn’t interesting, which meant that women wouldn’t be running after him and men wouldn’t find him threatening. There was nothing enviable about him, and his dialect occasionally made him seem like a hick. People let their guard down around him.
    Reiska’s scent completed my transformation. He considered himself a hip fellow—his aftershave and deodorant were both made by Ferrari. It was important to hide my own scent, so, coughing, I lit up a cigarette on my way to the bus stop. On occasion I’d even splashed Reiska’s clothes with gasoline. Our fingerprints would be the same, at least for now, so Reiska usually wore leather gloves, weather permitting.
    Reiska knew some of the people hanging out at the train station and stopped to chat with them. A woman impersonating a man appears to be younger than her biological age. Dressed as Reiska I was twenty-five years old, a farm boy who had moved to the city. It was easy for him to mingle with a bunch of teenagers who were hanging around the station. A group was speaking in a mix of Russian and Finnish, including a couple of thirtysomething men in leather jackets. I inched closer, and it didn’t take long before one of them talked to me.
    “Hey, what do you want?” I could tell from his accent that he wasn’t Finnish. “These girls here are not for sale, you know.”
    “I’m not after girls.”
    “What, boys then? We don’t have them, but give me a fifty and I’ll give you a good lead.”
    “I only want one: a Russian painter guy. He sold an old lady a nice painting, and now I’d like to get my hands on one, too. Do you know him—Yuri Trankov? Drives a garbage truck, paints nature scenes?”
    “I don’t know any painters,” he said. “But I can ask around if you want. Give me